Welcome to Our World

Ruby Elizabeth George was born this morning, at 4:21am. She was 8 lbs 10 oz, and 19 inches long. It only took an hour and a half from when Rose woke up with heavy labor till she was born, and we barely made it into the delivery room before she arrived. That was a nice change from the 18-hours of labor that Rose went through with Gus, and it was done without medication.

I don't have a lot of time to write right now, as I need to get back to the hospital, but I have uploaded a first batch of pictures to our Picasa account. More will follow in the coming days, along with further posts about her young life.

If you want to come visit us in the hospital, please call Rose or me and we'll let you know our room number and when would be a good time.

More details about Gus' birth

Here is a copy of a blog entry that Rose made on her MySpace account, which has more details and a different perspective on the actual labor and delivery, as well as some of the events since then:

"Monday morning I was sure I was never going to have Gus. I went to the Dr. and we set up another appt for past my due date. Long about 3pm my water spontaneously broke. I went to the birthing center just to verify that it was a ruptured membrane and while I was there I went into labor strong enough to admit me. I planned on going as natural as I could, but after 10 hours of back labor back to back to back with less than 15 seconds between contractions I took the epidural. At that point I was fully effaced but still dilated only to 3 (back labor can be far less productive) This is by far the best decision I have made in my entire life, if I had not taken it I would have had to have an emergency C section. I was able to relax and went from 3 to 7 in 4 hours and 7 to 10 in half an hour. I was able to push, I was told I was one of the best pushers they have seen, especially for an epidural and a first time mom, but the baby was OP (sunny side up) and too big and he wouldn't turn over. After 2 hours of serious pushing they called a doc in to manually flip the baby and I was able to deliver after another half hour of pushing. I did end up with a second degree tear but they told me with his head I should have had a 4th degree. He had some trauma after being in the canal for so long and pushing the wrong part of his skull against my pelvis. He had to go up to the NICU right after he was born because he wasn't breathing well. He had a fever (I was group B negative) he had the cord wrapped around his neck and he was striding instead of breathing. He scored a 5 on his 1 minute apgar and 8 on his 5 min apgar. He was pretty coneheaded and his nose was smushed and bruised so bad, bless his heart! That is evening out some now, his nostrils are just uneven. He also had blood sugar issues because he was so big. He was born at 9:01 am Tues and was 9 pounds 3 oz and 20.7 inches long. They finally released him to us from the NICU around noon and we came home Wednesday around 3pm. Last night was our first night home and it was rough, but we made it. Because of his trauma he had to go back to see the pediatrician today. He is jaundiced and he has lost too much weight. He weighed in this morning at 8 pounds 2 oz. We have to go back for a weight check tomorrow to make sure that he hasn't lost anymore. I am struggling with the feeding, but he and I will continue to learn together. He is just a big strong guy and my production can't keep up, and he needs so much to heal from his birth, it really was pretty tough on him. My mom has been here to help and it has been fab, I am really glad she is here. I have had maybe 10 hours of sleep since I woke up on Monday morning, so I haven't felt much up to phone calls or visitors, and I am still pretty sore.

I am really hopeful that the weigh in will go well tomorrow, and when I get a chance I will let you know. Willie has been updating the family blog, but is such a trooper helping me and staying up to help at night, so he will update that more as he can to, please be sure to follow that too, so you miss nothing about the George family.

Gus is a sweet natured baby that is easily consoled, but he works himself up pretty quickly when he is mad. I think he looks like a god mix between me and Willie if you look at our baby pictures, which you can't as you don't have access to them. He hates having his diaper changed more than anything, but he keeps his eyes open a lot just taking everything in. We are so blessed to have this little guy, he is an angel.

Thank you so much to everyone who has called! I am getting caught up eventually. I love my new little man. I think I am up to starting to take visitors here at home, but I respectfully ask that you call first, because the breastfeeding thing can be really really tough. Don't give up, I am not ignoring you, I am just really tired and overwhelmed! I really feel loved and cared for. When you call Willie or I can get you our new address and directions.

I need to crash out while I can, love you guys!"

More Pictures

So we've got some additional pictures from the first few days of Gus being home. I decided that I want to separate batches of photos by time frame, and I'm sure there will be more additions over the coming days and weeks. Here, then, is a link to our Picasa Web photo page - where all future family pictures will be posted:

http://picasaweb.google.com/WilliamAndRose/

A lot of these are also being posted on MySpace and Facebook by Rose, so if you are active on those sites there will be a lot of overlap.

On the subject of birthdays

As many of you know, I am a numbers guy. Not as crazy as some accountants and engineers I know, but I like to find patterns to things that help me remember them. This is especially true with birthdays, as I have a horrible time remembering them (I'd like to say 'sorry' to all of my friends that I've forgotten b-days for over the years).

In my immediate family there is a trend that really helps with this. Check it out:

My birthday: October 10th
My mom: November 9th
My brother: December 8th

See? Each adds up to 20, and they go in order! By this logic, I was really hoping that baby Gus would wait till September 11th (yeah, I know, not the best date in history). Needless to say that my wife was not excited about that - it would have been 2 weeks past the due date, and she was getting sick of being pregnant.

When he was born on August 26th, I was trying to figure out how the heck I would remember that of all things - but I came up with two ideas. One is that each section of his birth date adds up to 8: 08-26-08. That works pretty well, but even cooler is the similarity to my wife's date. See if you see the pattern:

Gus: 08-26-08
Rose: 06-08-82

See that? The six digits are all the same - just in a different order! How cool is that?

Home from the hospital

We are all safe and sound at home, after a very nice stay at the Group Health Family Beginnings Unit. Both Rose and the baby were discharged late this morning, though we didn't leave till both had a chance to get nice naps in. I'm sure it will take everyone a little while to get adjusted to being at the apartment, but we've got Rose's mom here for a couple weeks to help and a great doula who is ready to help us settle in.

It was nice seeing those of you who were able to come visit us in the recovery room, and for those who didn't get to swing by - we weren't there very long - you will all have to come visit our home in the coming weeks and months :)

Pictures are uploading...

Rose and Gus are still doing well; they are working on breastfeeding as I type. Our nurses have all been great, and the last two have been quite good about helping with this art form.

I am about to head to bed, but I've got pictures in the process of uploading right now. They are just going to be medium-size for now, since GHC's free internet has a pretty poor upload speed, but they should be available for viewing in about an hour at the following site:

http://picasaweb.google.com/WilliamAndRose/GusAtTheHospital

Enjoy! :)

Resting now

So Rose and Gus got moved up to a new room where they can rest, eat, etc. Mom and baby are laying down sleeping right now, buying me a precious few minutes to write this posting. We have taken a lot of pictures, but I didn't think to grab a USB cable and my laptop is too new to have a Compact Flash reader, so it will probably be tomorrow before we have pics online. As soon as we do I'll link to them from here, though.

If you want to come visit we will probably be here till mid-day tomorrow, but please call my cell phone first. We are on the 4th floor of the north building at Group Health Central Campus in Capitol Hill. Just ask for Julia R George when you go to the desk.

He has arrived!

Welcome to the world, son! Gus Finley George was born today (August 26th) at 9:01am. He weighed in at 9lbs 3ozs (an initial 9-2 was reported because of rounding from the metric they really weigh in) and 20.7 inches long. We will be calling family and friends soon, but the list Rose made pre-birth is REALLY long - so if you don't get called right away (or at all, if I "lose" the list) don't feel left out :)

Mommy is pushing!

I woke up this morning at 6:23am to Rose sitting with our Dulah and starting to push. Our son will be here soon! I'm so excited! :)

At the hosptial, expecting soon!

It seems very appropriate to begin this blog with a couple postings related to the first human addition to our family. So for the inaugural "issue", I am writing to you from Rose's room here at the Family Beginnings Unit at Group Health. We went into the hospital at about 5pm this afternoon, shortly after Rose's water broke. She spent several hours in labor, and shortly after midnight went ahead and elected to get an epidural. She is now resting peacefully, and is back to her chatty self.

I suspect my guess that the baby would be born at 4am this morning will not make it, as she is just dilated to 3cm - oh well! Hopefully we both will be resting soon, and I'll post again in the morning when things have progressed a little further. Once the baby arrives, we'll announce his name (a secret, so far) and hopefully post pictures.